


it must have been love

by anacel



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bernie Wolfe Lives, F/F, Fix-It, not a ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21747478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anacel/pseuds/anacel
Summary: She should have known, there was nowhere in the world that Bernie Wolfe would not haunt her.Prompt Fill: Berena Advent 2019
Relationships: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe
Comments: 13
Kudos: 90
Collections: Berena Advent 2019





	it must have been love

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the lovely Bonnie for her wonderful beta work, as always. <3
> 
> I had this written initially for another fic exchange and reworked it for Berena Advent 2019. Prompt Fill for Day 5: Peace. 
> 
> My peace of mind, y'all.

"You're a hard woman to find, Serena Campbell.”

A fork clatters on her plate, blinking back a cloud of haze to lay her eyes on the woman appearing in front of her. Her blonde hair is longer than Serena remembers, haloed around her face, lovely as ever, but far too neat. "I really must be losing my mind,” Serena mumbles to herself. "You're not real. Stop this.”

She’s fine with entertaining the thought of Bernie popping up every now and again, in her flat, when she’s getting ready for work, at night when insomnia keeps her up. They talk sometimes when there’s nobody around to brand her mad. 

“Who’s not real?” The woman asks, standing across from her with a perplexed look on her face as she double-checks her mobile phone.

"You!" Serena hisses, crumpling up a napkin, and looking anywhere but up. She feels the other patrons in the coffeeshop eyeing her oddly, probably wondering why she's speaking to thin air. 

Serena stands abruptly gathering her coat and bag, leaving the cafe in a flurry. Refuses to let her grief consume her in public where her students may see her.

“Professor Campbell? Please, wait." Bernie lops behind her, trying to catch up. “I’m sorry to bother, someone told me I might find you here — if I could just have a moment of your time.” 

Serena walks out into the cold, brisk air, exhaling sharply as tears well up in her eyes. She hastens her pace up the high street, trying to outrun a ghost. 

She left Holby City to find peace, flying across the ocean to settle in Cambridge, to rebuild a life and career where no one outside Jason could reach her. 

She should have known, there was nowhere in the world that Bernie Wolfe would not haunt her.

“Ms. Campbell — I need to speak to you. Please slow down." 

Serena turns around, finds Bernie - _her_ Bernie chasing after her, like some cruel joke only her mind could conjure up. She fumbles for the earbuds in her jacket pocket, plugs them in her ear. She takes a deep breath and remembers it's all in her head. 

“I told you, you can't keep popping up in the middle of the day. It's disruptive, especially during my lectures." Serena speaks as if she's talking on her mobile, berating the blonde-haired woman. 

“I've just landed in Cambridge, they said the campus was the best way to reach you." 

“Who said?”

“Cameron, my son, apparently I have one of those.” She smiles, a bit bewildered. “And a daughter, too. Who’d have thought.”

“Seriously, Bernie, for a figment of my imagination you are quite the storyteller,” Serena says sternly, shaking her head to dispel the hallucination. Perhaps she's dreaming, one of those very lucid dreams. “You're not real. And I've forgotten to take my medication." 

"Hold on a minute." Bernie rounds the corner ahead of Serena, blocking her way. "You're mistaking me for dead." 

"Because you are!" Serena yells, hysterically, losing the last bit of her composure. The tears that have gathered in the corners of her eyes have surely turned into ice crystal now. "You are, Bernie. Just disappear, please." Serena begs, broken and so very sad. 

“I can’t,” she says, reaching forward to clasp Serena's shoulders. "I'm not dead!" 

The force of Bernie’s voice, the pressure of her palms, they take the wind out of Serena’s sail. She nearly faints, buckling from the sudden realization. She feels like she’s going to be sick. 

Bernie catches her by the elbow, leads her dazedly across the street to a nearby park. 

"Oh god," Serena chokes out. "Shit — but this is impossible.” Serena talks frantically, walking in circles around this woman claiming to be Bernie, taking her in from all angles, and measuring her up against the one seared in her mind. “You — you died — the explosion." 

They buried an empty casket. 

"In Mogadishu, yes.” Bernie tries to explain. “They told me I was just outside the centre of the explosion, woke up in a room full of people I didn’t know in a nearby village. Dead? Not so much. None that stuck anyway, except for a chunk of my memories. They seem to be gone for good."

Serena searches for recognition in Bernie’s face and doesn’t find it. She nearly crumbles again, sitting down on the nearest bench. 

"You don't know who I am?" 

Bernie shakes her head. 

_Bernie’s alive. Bernie has amnesia. Bernie. Alive. Let’s focus on that, Campbell._

"The people who rescued me found this picture inside one of my pockets." Bernie shows her a tattered photograph of herself and Bernie, her face nearly unidentifiable by the wear and tear. 

"That's us... Yes,” Serena confirms. It’s the same photograph she keeps by her night table, sun-kissed and healing in the south of France, and the love they have for each other spilling out of the frame it nearly saved them once.

It saves her again, now.

Still, Bernie looks at her like a stranger. 

"You seemed to be quite important to whomever I was before the explosion.”

"Berenice Griselda Wolfe." 

Bernie scrunches her nose. "That really is an unfortunate sounding name." 

"I love that name." 

"I haven't the faintest idea who I was before the explosion, except for what I've read on file, but who I am is another matter.” Bernie seems lost, a scared puppy with eyes as wide, looking towards Serena for answers, for direction. “I don’t know if I have the right to ask this of you, Professor Campbell, but I feel I can trust you with my life. I trust you more than my so-called ex-husband and I’ve just met you." 

Serena nearly laughs, of course, Marcus has already intervened. Leave it to him to bugger up any chance of Bernie regaining half her memory. 

“Let’s start with you calling me Serena.” 

Bernie smiles, takes a glove off to hold out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Serena.”

“And you preferred to be called Bernie." 

"That sounds better already."

Serena takes Bernie’s hands in her own, and Bernie covers them with her other hand to ward off the chill. It’s what finally convinces Serena this really isn’t a hallucination, that Bernie isn’t a figment of her imagination. 

"Can I ask you why you've flown all the way here, instead of having your son break the news? I'm very glad to see that you're alive, believe me. But surely he’s told you… about us." 

"To tell you the truth, Serena. I wanted to get out from under the scrutiny, it overwhelmed me. I had barely any recollection of Cameron and Charlotte. What kind of mother forgets her own children?" 

"You've come for my help? With Cameron and Charlotte?" 

"No, I...." Bernie stops short, "I dreamt of you... This woman across the operating table with your eyes. I didn't know if you were real or not." 

"Oh, Bernie." She squeezes Bernie’s hands to let her know that she’s real too. 

"Who are you to me, Serena?" 

_Who are we not_ , Serena wants to say. They were everything and nothing to each other.

"I'm - we - were together, before the explosion. I mean, we had split up... Last I heard you were still leading the trauma centre in Nairobi, next thing we've received news from several sources that you were MIA in Somalia." 

"An ex-girlfriend then? Ex-wife?" Bernie’s eyes glint with mirth, so carefree and unaware. So very different from the last time they spoke.

"Well, it was rather complicated. Nothing was ever easy with us, except theatre, Hepburn and Tracey - with scalpels, mind you."

Something in Bernie’s eyes flickers when she mentions surgery. "We worked together then? Same hospital?" 

“It’s how we met,” she says, corners of her mouth curling despite herself. It’s the first time in months that she can recall memories of Bernie without dissolving into a sombre mood. "Yes, you were — still are the most talented and fearless doctor that I've ever worked with."

Bernie chuckles. "Quite a tall order."

“Too much?” Serena worries, pulling her hand away to fidget with her necklace, afraid that she’s overwhelming Bernie with information. 

“No - no. I’ve heard it before, it’s just the first time something clicked. Your nephew… Jason mentioned that you might like to see this face. Even if I haven't got it all figured out yet." 

_Oh, Jason._ "He’s right, I've missed this face quite a bit." 

Bernie blushes crimson, tucking a loose tendril of hair behind her ear, and Serena delights she can still elicit a reaction from Bernie, even now. 

"Can I?" Serena asks for permission, a hand rising to hover close to Bernie’s head, a sense of warmth gathering in her palm. Bernie’s eyes flutter shut as she leans into Serena’s touch. Serena can’t help but drag her thumb along Bernie’s cheeks placing the barest caress there, enough to prove to herself that Bernie is real, living and breathing. She could spend the whole afternoon just tracing the map of laugh lines on Bernie’s face, knows the one between Bernie’s brow has her name written on it. But she fixates on the new, healed scars, a chapter in Bernie’s life that she doesn’t know, memories of horrific trauma lying dormant. Doubt passes through her, doubts about whether she’s the right woman for the job. The right woman to shepherd and coax Bernie’s memories.

"Do I pass muster?" Bernie whispers, sounding uncertain about her own reality. 

"More than." Serena pulls away, sniffles, eyes burning from unshed tears, and leans back against the bench. 

Now is not the time for doubt. 

Serena feels an overwhelming sense of devotion to do right by Bernie. _My first port of call_ , Bernie called her once. And Bernie needs her now, lost at sea with no recollection. For Bernie, she will be a lighthouse — a dock — a safe passage. 

Serena will hold on to their memories for safe-keeping until Bernie’s ready to remember them again. 

"I'm not sure that I can live up to this Bernie of yours."

"Trust me, you already have. You're alive.” Serena says with conviction. “Only the real Bernie Wolfe could have risen from the dead. No word of warning. You showed up unannounced to my place of work, and turned my world upside down." 

“That’s good. Because I’d like to try.” Bernie lets out a breath of condensation to share a smile with Serena, hovering on the precipice of something entirely new. 

“I’d like that very much.”

Serena stares off into the distance, letting time pass with its own momentum, and the hush of midwinter falls over them. They’re content to sit in silence, side by side, drinking in what’s been said.

A sense of peace blankets over her, a sense of rightness. There is a tomorrow for them. 

Something in Bernie hasn’t forgotten Serena after all. Something grand it only existed in fairytales. 

Bernie Wolfe is alive. 

And the world can go round.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> 


End file.
